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Pinscreen Deepfake Live Prototype [video]

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Re: Pinscreen Deepfake Live Prototype [video]

#52
post #2

Before anyone is panicking, please remind yourself that whatever medium was used by humans as a form of communication in the last few thousand years, was also used for fakes. You only need a half-decent voice actor to pretend you are someone else on the phone. Fake photographs are as old as photography. Even the probably most immediate form of interpersonal communication, seeing another person, can be faked, which is…

In 1358 you could fake your identity and communicate with a handful of people. In 2020 you can fake your identity and communicate with 7.5 billion people at once. I think there is a difference.

Re: Pinscreen Deepfake Live Prototype [video]

#53
post #18

The human brain is very skilled at recognizing faces, it's the result of evolution. While deepfake are high quality, I think most people can notice that it's not entirely authentic. A deepfake cannot really account for the shape of the skull, face mimics, face muscles, how the head and jaw move, etc, there are many things that the human brain works on to identify a face. I'm not really sure that deepfakes measure and…

I think people are mostly able to tell because they are told "this is a deepfake video of arnold schwarzenegger" (and the technology is early). Now imagine someone deepfakes a video of a gathering of people taken from across the room. It purportely shows a politician talking to some constituents and espousing some whacky ideas. It gets posted and before the politician can address it, it's already gone viral and there are pitchforks at their door. The video quality issues are hidden by the fact that it is a grainy cell phone video in a dimmly lit room with digital zoom enabled.

Re: Pinscreen Deepfake Live Prototype [video]

#54
post #2

Before anyone is panicking, please remind yourself that whatever medium was used by humans as a form of communication in the last few thousand years, was also used for fakes. You only need a half-decent voice actor to pretend you are someone else on the phone. Fake photographs are as old as photography. Even the probably most immediate form of interpersonal communication, seeing another person, can be faked, which is…

In the past, you needed to put effort to fake things. Of course, people still exist that believe the moonlanding videos were faked, but their hypothesis hinges on the government spending extraordinary amounts of money to produce the fake. Deepfakes are deeply troubling, because anyone with a computer (a requirement that's getting optional as well quite fast) can fake any video almost instantly. Consider just one sini…

> because anyone with a computer

How is that different from anything else nowadays? That's what computers do for us.

Making calculations, decrypting text, generating art, developing a software.

All of these used to be harder and more manual and time-consuming. Now, anyone with a computer or a phone and an app can do these things way easier, and I'm sure there are better examples I failed to think of.

It only makes sense that even the "bad" uses of a computer will be benefitted by computer progress.

Re: Pinscreen Deepfake Live Prototype [video]

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the Flat Earth movement. I don't think anything about that is "deliberate propaganda". It's just nutjobs gathering and gatherings of nutjobs creating more nutjobs. It's much easier these days with "social" media.

What is the actual social impact of the flat earth thing, though? Is flat earth creating new nutjobs? Does it really have the power to draw from the ranks of the rational, or is it drawing in people who would have fallen for something absurd eventually? I'd be curious to find out what social conditions predispose people to believing it.

This might not be a popular answer, but I think the hope is that a rube would "fall for" something positive that happens to be correct and/or beneficial. eg, suppose somebody believes in modern physics, not because they understand it all, but because they know this is the "right" idea.

This is obviously less ideal than someone actually understanding an idea they profess to hold, but it's far better to have support around beneficial ideas. It's not hard to imagine a lot of important issues fitting into this: support for liberalism and demoracy, support for global warming, support for coherent ideas about vaccines, etc. These all require broad public support, and the truth of the matter is that many people generally don't spend much time evaluating why they believe what they do.

I understand this is not a perfect point of view: eg, who gets to decide what the "best" ideas are.

Re: Pinscreen Deepfake Live Prototype [video]

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree and propose that we are indeed exiting a golden age of objectivity that evolved alongside Western Civilization the past century at the least if not longer. We developed as a world because the most important nations did not peddle obvious distortions of facts in matters of fundamental importance (that all people are equal, that no one deserves to die, that the world needs preservation, and recently, that ma…

This is a very historically-ignorant view. Every culture and state since the beginning of time has manipulated information to suit its needs. We don’t even need to back that far: the beginning of the Iraq war, not even twenty years ago, was rife with “fake news.” The fact that the buzzword didn’t exist doesn’t mean that the phenomenon didn’t exist.

The modern world with its social networks makes it so much easier to do on a large scale, though.

https://medium.com/@francois.chollet/what-worries-me-about-a...

Re: Pinscreen Deepfake Live Prototype [video]

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree and propose that we are indeed exiting a golden age of objectivity that evolved alongside Western Civilization the past century at the least if not longer. We developed as a world because the most important nations did not peddle obvious distortions of facts in matters of fundamental importance (that all people are equal, that no one deserves to die, that the world needs preservation, and recently, that ma…

This is a very historically-ignorant view. Every culture and state since the beginning of time has manipulated information to suit its needs. We don’t even need to back that far: the beginning of the Iraq war, not even twenty years ago, was rife with “fake news.” The fact that the buzzword didn’t exist doesn’t mean that the phenomenon didn’t exist.

Certainly the sheer volume of fake information available today is orders of magnitude different.

Re: Pinscreen Deepfake Live Prototype [video]

#59
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the Flat Earth movement. I don't think anything about that is "deliberate propaganda". It's just nutjobs gathering and gatherings of nutjobs creating more nutjobs. It's much easier these days with "social" media.

What is the actual social impact of the flat earth thing, though? Is flat earth creating new nutjobs? Does it really have the power to draw from the ranks of the rational, or is it drawing in people who would have fallen for something absurd eventually? I'd be curious to find out what social conditions predispose people to believing it.

They have big conferences about it, as long as no one is hurt all good with that, but truly doubt that people aren't being hurt by this delusion.

It's an illness that demands rejection of overwhelming proof, it leads down dark paths, much like how arsonists become murderers these things need to be cutoff at the stem. There's nothing wrong with that

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